Wednesday, September 28, 2011

A Poor Craftsman Blames His Tools

Apologies to my regular readers (Hi Mom and Dad!), but this post will be photo and cat heavy.

As part of her continuing education program, my cat has recently learned how to open cabinets in the kitchen. As fun as it is to hear scratching and doors slamming at all hours of the day, and as much as I love the, "which door will the cat jump out of?" game, I do have some concerns.

These concerns are twofold: Neko does not reseal the corn chips, causing precious tostitos to become stale when I most need a snack. And two, the cat can not read.

Hard to believe, but the cat is completely unable to read the safety warnings denoting various poisons underneath the sink. Perhaps if the manufacturers of bleach had thought to include tiny pictures of vomiting cats I wouldn't need to worry, but until Clorox considers all potential consumers of their product, Professor Meowmers must be prevented from gaining access to the houses cleaning supplies, old grocery bags, sponges, and assorted dirty dishes that Annie and I try to hide from guests.

To this end, I purchased child safe door latches. Presumably, babies are not any more intelligent than house cats and must be prevented from trapping their tails underneath falling pots and pans. I picked these latches up at the local hardware store after gazing longingly at the axes and muttering under my breath until asked if I could be helped. They were the only door latches at the Maple Leaf Tru-Value, so I presume that they are the top of the line in child safety.

Hmm, or maybe not. Well, it's not like you have to touch these every time you use them... Anyway, I'll just hope that it's only one chemical in the latches that causes cancer, birth defects, and other reproductive harm, and that the side effects will be laser eyes for any future offspring of mine. Otherwise, if my unborn children or I get cancer, I'm coming for you S-4463 Child Safe Door and Cabinet Latch. Ok, with those safety concerns out of the way, it's time to install the door latches. This shouldn't be too hard, with the proper tools.

Not pictured is the bottle opener I needed to get started. After carefully measuring out the distance for the mounting piece, pre-drilling the holes, swearing as I drilled through the side of the cabinet, more carefully pre-drilling the holes, screwing in the bracket backwards, struggling to find reverse on the drill, screwing in the bracket forwards, and attempting for over an hour to get the latch piece to line up, my work was done. Yep, it's just that easy. I also hit upon an alternate solution about 65 minutes in that fits more with the overall aesthetic look of Annie and my apartment.

3 comments:

Those California labels are consistently ridiculous. My understanding is that they are required on anything that has constituent parts that could be carcinogenic, even if those chemicals have been combined with other materials and rendered chemically inert.

My favorite is when you rent a car in CA, they have a sign up with that same text behind the counter, referring to the car.

Thanks, Fred! That's pretty interesting; I had no idea CA had such a law (and still have no idea why a hardware store in Seattle has stickers from it). And here I figured that the screws were depleted uranium or something like that. It does seem a tad ridiculous to be labeling a chunk of plastic you touch as carcinogenic. I'd be more worried about the non-stick pans I'll get out after touching those latches and put on dry, high heat and scrape clean with a metal spatula, but those didn't come with warnings.